CYIL vol. 16 (2025)

CYIL 16 (2025) REFLECTING ON THE FRAMEWORK CONVENTION FOR THE PROTECTION… In 1950, at the request of the Economic and Social Council, 12 the UN Secretary-General submitted a study examining whether the minority treaties and declarations of the League of Nations system should still be considered valid components of the international legal order. 13 Although the Secretary-General concluded that the dissolution of the League of Nations did not automatically terminate the relevant obligations concerning minority protection, he found that the validity of those treaties and declarations needed to be assessed in light of fundamental changes of circumstances. In summary, he identified four major changes: first, the dissolution of the League of Nations; second, the failure of the interwar minority protection regime to achieve the expected outcomes; third, changes in the status of states bound by minority treaties adopted after WW I; and fourth, the emergence of the new concept of human rights, including the principle of non-discrimination as enshrined in the UN Charter. Based on these findings, the Secretary-General concluded that the minority treaties and declarations from the interwar period had ceased to be valid. Only certain provisions of the previous protection system remained in force, such as those regarding the special status of the Åland Islands and their Swedish-speaking population, or the treaty-based regulation of national minorities in Greece and Turkey. Although a few new bilateral treaties on the protection of national minorities emerged after 1945, 14 these no longer represented a comprehensive or cohesive protection model akin to that of the League of Nations. To put it briefly, the new concept of UN-led human rights protection with its openly universal ambition largely replaced the old League of Nations model which focused primarily on the interests and experiences of Europe and European states. With the exception of Iraq, which, upon gaining independence in 1932, issued a declaration on the protection of national minorities, only European states were involved in the international minority protection system. Therefore, any attempt to establish a genuinely global mechanism for the protection of minority rights was difficult to reconcile with such a narrowly defined geographic framework. 15 For these reasons, it can be said that the transition from the European model of minority protection to the universal human rights framework was marked by a significant discontinuity in the international legal order. Regarding the ambivalent relationship between human rights and minority rights , 16 the 1950 study by the UN Secretary-General acknowledged that respect for human rights and non-discrimination, on the one hand, and the protection of minorities, on the other, are not identical concepts. According to the study, minority protection is a broader concept than 14 One example is the so-called Gruber–De Gasperi Agreement of 1946, whose main objective was to regulate the status of the German-speaking minority in South Tyrol. In 1955, the victorious powers of the Second World War concluded an international treaty with Austria which, among other things, included provisions for the protection of the Croatian and Slovenian minorities in southern and southeastern Austria. Other treaties containing provisions on the protection of national minorities are the Italian–Yugoslav treaty of 1975 and the German–Danish treaty of 1971. 15 HAFNER, Gerhard. Die Entwicklung des Rechts des Minderheitenschutzes. In: HOFMANN, Rainer; ANGST, Doris; LANTSCHNER, Emma; RAUTZ, Günther a REIN, Detlev (eds.) Rahmenübereinkommen zum Schutz nationaler Minderheiten: Handkommentar. Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2015, pp. 27–45. 16 For potential conflicts between the protection of human rights and the protection of minorities, see SCHEU, Harald Christian. Zákaz diskriminace a ochrana menšin. [Prohibition of discrimination and protection of minorities] In: Dny práva 2012 – Days of Law 2012. Brno: Masarykova univerzita, 2012, pp. 186–200. 12 ECOSOC Res. 116 C (VI) of 1 March 1948. 13 UN Doc. E/CN.4/367 of 7 April 1950.

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